Having trouble getting into a holiday mood? Playwright Conor McPherson has just the thing to lift your spirits. It involves a bunch of drunken losers who are visited one Christmas Eve by a man in a fancy suit with special powers — and he's not Santa Claus.

Mr. Lockhart, the not-so-mysterious fellow who appears toward the end of the first act in McPherson's The Seafarer (* * * * out of four), which opened Dec. 6 at Broadway's Booth Theatre, may not have horns on his head. But he makes no secret of his identity, at least not to Sharky, the underachieving, violence-prone alcoholic who beat him in a crucial poker game years ago. When Lockhart shows up at the house near Dublin where Sharky cares for his blind brother, he's eager for a rematch, and the stakes are equally high.

What follows is a funny, creepy, suspense-packed thrill ride that will leave you chilled to the bone, then turn around and warm your heart. McPherson may not have a spiritual agenda, but Seafarer conveys a faith in the possibility for redemption and salvation, even for the most lost and damaged souls, that makes it transcend great storytelling.

McPherson also ably directs a flawless cast. Ciaran Hinds is magnificent as Lockhart — elegant and terrifying, but just vulnerable enough to make the Devil's battle against the all-too-human Sharky, brilliantly played by David Morse, interesting. Jim Norton, who was also in the original cast at the U.K.'s National Theatre, is hilarious and moving as Sharky's brother, whose cantankerousness belies a tender core. Conleth Hill, another London import, and Sean Mahon are spot-on as the siblings' foolish friends.

There's lots of foolishness afoot and little soul-searching in Is He Dead? (* * ½), David Ives' adaptation of a Mark Twain comedy written in 1898 but unpublished until a scholar discovered the manuscript in 2002. Ives' tightened version, which opened Sunday at the Lyceum Theatre, focuses on a starving French artist who conspires with friends to fake his own death, thus ensuring that his paintings will finally garner value.

The scheme requires the artist to disguise himself as his own sister, leading to all manner of confusion. Though flashes of Twain's cutting wit and wisdom occasionally poke through the mayhem, the humor is breezy and often quaint. And Michael Blakemore's briskly dutiful direction stays rather too true to the conventions of old-time farce.

Still, there are a number of crowd-pleasing performances. Leading man Norbert Leo Butz spends most of the evening in drag, as a gaudily dressed, perpetually stressed widow, and John McMartin is predictably droll as the befuddled dad of the artist's sweetheart. But the best reason to see Dead is David Pittu, who nimbly juggles numerous roles, among them a snooty art collector and the King of France.

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The Seafarer: Jim Norton, left, and Sean Mahon are between you-know-who and the deep blue sea.

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